Twisted Triangle (38 page)

“If it was God’s will that Gene would get out of jail, then he’d get out of jail,” she later said.

The thirty-minute hearing started off with testimony from probation offi Elnora Cunanan, who said that Gene claimed he had not understood the trial process. She said he complained that he’d endured long days sitting in a freezing holding cell and was weak from not eating the rancid sandwiches he’d been served. He also claimed that he’d been denied showers for more than three weeks. But in fact, Elnora said, Gene had showered eleven times and refused to shower nine others.

Asked if she’d seen any indication that he was confused during their interview, Elnora said, “He appeared to understand what was going on.”

Reid argued that the judge shouldn’t fi a sentence that pe-nalized Gene for committing a violent offense in 1993, when he’d been charged only with obstruction of justice.

He said he felt optimistic about Gene’s future. “We know full well that Gene’s going to have to pay the piper, but . . . this guy still has something to salvage. He made an enormous contribution to his country. . . . It doesn’t serve society and it doesn’t serve him well just to toss him away. We would respectfully request a reasonable sentence that gives him the opportunity to heal and come back one day, make a contribution and see his children.”

Paul, however, reminded the judge that Gene was already on probation for another crime when he committed his most recent offenses, and that he’d already had the opportunity to redeem himself after going to prison the first time.

“No doubt this man had—did do some good for the nation. He was certainly very capable, but you can make the same argument

about Hitler. Hitler did good things for Germany . . . but nevertheless, he committed atrocious crimes, just as that defendant did.”

Paul pointed out that Gene had four excellent attorneys, yet he still had the nerve to complain that he didn’t understand what was going on. Furthermore, he said, Gene not only told the probation offi that he still harbored ill feelings toward Margo but also had not accepted responsibility for his actions, an indicator that he couldn’t be rehabilitated.

Paul asked the judge to impose the jury’s recommended sentence. “I say that nine-tenths of the people that walk in this courtroom have some sort of mental disorder or they wouldn’t be here. But the jury found he was not insane and that’s the test. So I ask the court to do the only thing that you can do, and that is to keep him behind bars, where he can’t harm his wife or any other innocent person.”

Judge Potter gave Gene the opportunity to deliver a long speech, which he read from a legal pad. Even Margo thought he sounded sincere.

I’d like to thank you for giving [me] this opportunity to address the court and to apologize. I sat in silence during my trial. I was horrifi at the things that I was accused of doing to Margo, Mrs. Khalifeh, and Reverend Clever. I was in some semblance of a daze during portions of my trial. I’m not claiming to have any problem with the way I was represented . . . so if there’s any confusion over that, I’d like to clear that up. . . . I’m really stunned to fi what I have become, what I have always despised and that’s— I’ve be-come a criminal liability to the community and to society. I

wanted my life to be dedicated to protecting my country, . . . and through my careers in the military and law enforcement, I tried to express those ideas and values, and I’ve fallen very, very short. . . .

What’s happened here will never go away. It will haunt me and these other people forever. When I look in the mirror, I’m forced to face the fact that I did this to myself. I don’t blame anybody else. The harsh reality is that, and I’ve accepted it, my life

has been soured, not because of what Margo did to me and my children, but because of what I did. . . . Even though I’ve strayed a long way from my days in law enforcement, I moved even further away from my life as a father to Lindsey and Allison. Throughout their young lives, I’ve been a father who fought to love and protect my daughters, and now I’ve become the person who fathered them the greatest harm. . . .

I’m a reasonably educated man, but I don’t possess the words or vocabulary to express the pain that I experienced because of this. Every day I’m housed in a small cell and have nothing to do all day but think about this. . . . I am sincerely sorry. Words are cheap, but that’s all I have to offer. . . .

I would like to strongly encourage anyone . . . in law enforcement to stay as far away from undercover work as they can. Leave it alone. No matter how strong a person is or how great the assignment may appear, . . . the potential for harm is too great and the loss of one offi s mental health is not worth the results.

I don’t think it’s stretching the facts to say that I was one of the best, and now I’m a walking case history and study for the downside of that. . . . I hope to get the mental health treatment that I need while I’m serving my sentence. . . . I hope that someday in the fu-ture I can once again be an asset to our society and community and especially to my wonderful little girls.

As she listened to Gene’s speech, Margo didn’t feel angry at him. He was saying all the right things.

“Part of me was saying, ‘I wish I could believe him,’ and the other part of me was saying, ‘It’s just words; Gene is good at this, and I hope the judge is not believing him,’ ” she said later.

Paul noticed that Gene never actually apologized directly to Margo. Paul didn’t expect that he ever would, especially if he thought he could win his freedom on appeal.

Judge Potter followed up with a few comments of his own, describing this as a “rather unusual case in many ways.” He said that

as he read the sentencing memo written by Gene’s attorneys, he was struck by the similarity between the crimes Gene had investigated as an undercover agent and the offenses of which he’d been recently convicted.

He described Gene’s actions as “bizarre,” but also “meticulously planned and extremely dangerous.” After reviewing the various sentencing guidelines, he said, he had decided to exceed the state’s because of the jury’s recommendation, but also because he wanted to deter Gene and others like him from committing similar crimes. However, he told Gene that he was also suspending a “portion” of the sentence “to allow you the opportunity to rehabilitate

yourself with the use of supervised probation.”

The word “portion” proved to be quite an understatement. As Judge Potter went through each of the nine charges, he proceeded to lop large chunks of time off the corresponding sentences the jury had recommended, suspending some of them entirely.

With each reduction, Margo felt herself becoming increasingly nauseated.

“It was like new math,” Margo later said. “I didn’t know how he was coming up with his numbers.”

By the time the judge had fi he had suspended thirty-eight years, leaving Gene with a sentence of only twenty-three years— a huge disparity from the jury’s recommended total of sixty-one. He also gave Gene ten years of probation.

Margo couldn’t believe what she was hearing. She was so up-set, she’d lost track of the tally partway through, only this time it was her anger and disbelief that were distracting her. She’d felt a weight lifted from her shoulders during the reading of the verdict, but now it was bearing down once again.

How dare you say that all of this that we went through is worth twenty-three years
, she thought as she stared at Judge Potter.
What happens when he gets out?

Gene would be eligible for parole in 2016, after serving 85 percent of his sentence, which would otherwise go into 2019. He would be only sixty-one when he got out, and Margo knew that

after lifting weights and working out in prison as most inmates did, he would still be young and fit enough to finish the job he’d started— killing her.

The harsh reality was that she was not, in fact, done dealing with Gene Bennett.

Reid told the
Washington Post
that he was “disappointed and saddened” by the judge’s decision, but not surprised. He planned to fi an appeal on Gene’s behalf.

Recently, the judge explained his reasoning. “Retribution is important to a sentence, but so is rehabilitation,” he said. He added that he thought his sentence was fair “given other verdicts” for murder, and described the work by the defense attorneys as “probably the best attempt to prove insanity in a case that I’ve seen.”

The media immediately assembled on the courthouse walkway for another press conference. By the time Margo got outside, the anger was boiling up inside her.

She had written a letter to the judge before the sentencing, explaining that she and her children had consistently been in therapy and that if Gene were released sooner than the sixty-one years the jury had recommended, she would live in constant fear that he was going to kill her. Yet the only thing the judge had asked her during the hearing was whether she had any expenses that needed to be reimbursed as part of Gene’s restitution fee.

She vowed to write Judge Potter again just before Gene’s release date, saying, “Watch the obituaries. If I’m dead, then it’s on you.”

Paul and Jim were shocked by what the judge had done; Ron McClelland was angry too. Ron told Margo that he’d been worried when Judge Potter got the case. Other judges, he said, would have accepted the jury’s entire sentencing recommendation without question.

It was a sunny day, a little breezy, but the sky was clear. There were fewer reporters than after the verdict, but the drill was the same.

“What’s your reaction to the sentence?” one of them asked Margo.

Shaken and pale, she did not try to hide her disappointment or fear. “Continuing to live is my biggest concern,” she said. “Twenty-three years is a substantial amount of time for me to recover and get on with my life, but what do I do when that twenty-three years is over?”

As for Gene’s speech, she said, “I heard the words he said, but I still have to go home and deal with two children who know their father tried to kill their mother.”

“What do you plan to do when he gets out?” another reporter asked. “Will you move to another country?”

“There’s no place where I can hide,” Margo said flatly.

Looking back recently, Paul agreed. “If I had to bet on it, I’d say the chances are she’s probably a likely candidate [to be a victim of] some future criminal act. I don’t know, this guy could change, I guess. . . . He sat in a jail for a year, seething. . . . This was his effort to retaliate against her. . . . I thought the judge let him off pretty easy.”

Later that month, former FBI agent Bob Ressler called Margo, looking for information about how Patsy had come up with the plot for
All That Remains
. He said he was helping a family that had filed a lawsuit against the author, accusing her of using private information from a family member’s autopsy file.

Margo wouldn’t have helped Bob even if she’d had any information, because she had no reason to want to hurt Patsy. “Sorry, Bob,” she told him. “I have nothing that can help you.”

The following month, Dianna called with another message from Patsy, that she wanted to talk to Margo.

“It’s got something to do with the statute of limitations and this lawsuit. I don’t know,” Dianna said.

In light of Bob Ressler’s query, things began to make sense. Margo wanted to let sleeping dogs lie with Patsy, but she returned the call as asked, feeling a little nervous as she dialed Patsy’s num-ber. It had been a long time since they’d talked, and much had happened in between.

They talked for about fi minutes, chatting a bit before getting down to business.

“You’ve been through a lot,” Patsy said. “How have you been?” “The girls are doing good,” Margo said. “I’m doing fi It’s

been tough, but we’re doing okay.”

Patsy wanted to know if Margo could remember the date of the early release party at the Globe & Laurel for
All That Remains
. Patsy and her attorney wanted to argue that it was too late for anyone to fi a lawsuit because the statute of limitations clock had started that night, when she’d signed the first copies of her book.

Margo pulled out her copy and read Patsy the date of the inscription. She also mentioned Bob Ressler’s call.